After posting Tuesday about SWAT takes homeschooled boy from home I set up a Google Alert for "Tom Shiflett" "Garfield County" and I have gotten a ton of links. This story is getting picked up by blogs and the news media. Even Instapundit has mentioned it.
I try to be careful about back seat driving. It is always easy to solve other people's problems in hindsight.
As more information has come out it does appear the father may have been a bit of a hot head, but the police way, way over reacted.
This is one of the most complete write ups I've read. The mother says:
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Between 10 and 11 … a sheriff came to the door. My husband met him at the window and he began to question my husband. My husband spoke with him and answered all his questions. The sheriff then said if Tom would just let him speak with Jonathan (our 11 yr. old son) this whole matter (story following) would be closed," she documented.
"Tom said, 'You are saying, 'If I let you speak to Jonathan this whole matter will be closed.?' Then Tom called for Jonathan to come to the window," she said.
"As soon as Jonathan was visible to the sheriff, a SWAT team appeared shining lights on Jon's face and others were bashing at the door with a ramming device. My daughter resisted and pushed against the door to stop them as she didn't know who they were. I told her to back up and not try to fight them. They then entered our home, held a gun to my daughter's face and others of them, five or more, rushed into the living room and physically forced my other children to the ground."
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If this is true I don't see how we can trust anything the sheriff says about the incident.
Instapundit makes the point:
"... I doubt they'd have gone this route in a fancy neighborhood nearly as quickly as in a trailer park."
I think this story may have crossed a tipping point as it is being written and talked about in so many newspapers and blogs. It will be harder to just sweap under the rug.
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Technorati tags: homeschooling, homeschool, home school, home education, parenting, children, education
2 comments:
You're right that the media reports make the father out to be a bit of a hot head. It's hard for readers to judge if they don't know the family.
The problem with calling out SWAT teams is that it immediately escalates any situation they're involved in. Any citizen who is nominally reclusive and/or distrustful of government agency to begin with just has his biases reinforced when his "we've got it; just leave us alone" request is followed up by a battering ram.
Thanks for stopping by my blog the other day. We're homeschoolers, too -- three boys.
Homeschoolers everywhere I turn!
Five years or so ago there was an estimate that between 2% and 3% of children were being homeschooled. I think it is higher now.
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